Thursday, November 02, 2006
BRYAN DENSON
The Oregonian
EUGENE -- A federal judge on Wednesday handed down a 21/2-year prison sentence, along with a little free parental advice, to a convicted grave robber.
U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken, presiding over the sentencing of Michael J. Orf, 30, heard the Redmond man testify that in his teens he had helped dig up the skeleton of a Native American.
With tribal officials looking on, Orf acknowledged that his mother had forced him to take the human remains out of their home because they gave her nightmares. She had begged him to take the bones back to their burial site on federally managed land.
But Orf didn't follow his mom's advice, and that, said Aiken, was his undoing.
"You were ignorant," she said. "You were foolish. You didn't listen to your mother . . . . Had you listened, you wouldn't be here today."
Orf sold the skeleton to an undercover police informant for $1,000 in 2004. He then found himself ensnared, along with a dozen other defendants and nearly 20 other subjects, in a massive federal investigation called "Operation Bring 'Em Back."
After the sentencing, Karin Immergut, the U.S. attorney for Oregon, told reporters that the investigation into stolen Native artifacts and human remains is the largest such case in the nation's history, based on the number of artifacts seized (more than 100,000), acreage looted (more than 100 sites from Terrebone to Lakeview) and number of search warrants issued (26).
Tribal leaders from the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs testified about the deep pain that Orf and people like him have inflicted on their people by plundering their graves for artifacts.
"It's a horrible attack on our way of life," said Louis Pitt Jr., director of government affairs for the tribes. Pitt said his people always have honored their ancestors. "Where they fall and where they die is their place."
Beyond his prison term, Aiken also sentenced an apologetic Orf to three years supervised release, prohibited him from entering federally managed lands and ordered him to pay a $20,000 fine to help the tribes repatriate the stolen skeleton.
Aiken had asked tribal leaders to come up with a way for Orf to perhaps serve some community service on the reservation. But tribal leaders said they could not guarantee his safety in the company of the people his desecration angered.